Stallo (23 page)

‘And you can have windows in it,’ said Seved. ‘Do you want it to have windows?’

The boy nodded.

‘Then we’ll make some. But first we’ve got to dig it out properly.’

By now Seved had stepped down into the grotto opening, and from there he explained:

‘You make the windows by getting water to freeze in a cake tin or a bucket. And you can put things in the water too, to make decorations in the windowpanes. I’ll show you how to do it. You can put leaves in it, for example, although they’ll be hard to find at this time of year. But I’m sure we’ll find something else.’

To Seved’s great astonishment the boy suddenly leaned forwards and grabbed hold of his arm with both mittens. The grip was surprisingly strong and Seved didn’t understand what had got into him. Was it some kind of clumsy hug? But then he saw the frightened look under the furry edge of the hat and he understood why.

One of them had come out onto the porch.

It was Karats.

He stood there with his shaggy, flattened head to one side so that it would not hit the roof. His eyes were dark slits on either side of the coarse nose and his cheeks were moving as he chewed something. One of the hares was sitting at his feet like a little dog.

Seved crawled up out of the grotto and put his hand on the boy’s back, pulling him close as he looked towards the immobile giant on the porch.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘He won’t do anything. You don’t have to be afraid.’

But the boy was petrified. He refused to let go of Seved, so Seved helped him down from the pile of snow and carried him inside.

The police station in Jokkmokk was a yellow wooden two-storey building.

Susso had never been inside a police station before, never had anything to do with them, so she didn’t know what to expect. The ramp leading up to the entrance had been conscientiously cleared of snow and scattered with brown swirls of sand. She opened the door and went into a reception area, where two women were busying themselves behind a glass screen. It seemed as if they were searching for something. They were looking down and did not even notice her.

Susso took off her hat and pushed her hair to one side.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m here to meet a Lars-Göran Hannler, or I think that’s what he’s called.’

One of the women, who was heavily overweight and had a bleached fringe, told her to sit down and wait.

‘He won’t keep you long.’

Susso sat herself down on the waiting room’s small sofa, which was tucked behind a fig tree taller than she was. She crammed her hat into her jacket pocket and found her stick of lip balm, which she pulled out and rubbed over her lips. They had cracked in the cold.

She wondered whether the receptionists were police officers. They did not look like police officers – at least, not the fat one. Though you could never tell.

*

Ever since Edit had phoned and told her that Mattias had disappeared, Susso had blamed herself, and nothing could persuade her otherwise. The guilt felt like a bitter grey lump inside her. However hard she tried she could not supress the thought that she had triggered all these events by driving to Vaikijaur and setting up the camera.

The photos taken by the wildlife camera had scared her. Those white eyes were aimed at her. ‘It’s like I’ve been fishing and caught something I don’t want on the end of my hook,’ she had said to her mother. And so it was.

*

Lars-Göran Hannler was wearing a light-brown corduroy jacket and dark-blue jeans which he drew up at the waist before stretching out his hand to greet her. His palm felt rough and warm. He had a suntanned face, pale probing eyes and light-grey hair in a flat side parting. On the skin beneath his shirt collar shone a slender gold chain.

‘I’m glad you could come,’ he said.

They walked up a staircase with framed photographs on the walls. Susso rested her hand on the bannister and studied the policeman’s back. A distended pocket containing a wallet came into view occasionally in the jacket’s back vent.

In silence they walked down a short corridor and rounded a corner. She glanced at the name plates placed at eye level on the doors.
Kvickström
it said on one of them, and she recalled the same name written on one of the mailboxes in Vaikijaur. Somewhere a phone was ringing. There was absolutely nothing to show that the police did their investigative work from here – or perhaps she had completely misunderstood everything and that
kind of work was carried out in Luleå instead.

‘This is where I live,’ the police officer said as they arrived at his office.

He waved towards the chair, indicating where Susso was to sit. After sitting down she pressed her palms together and pushed them between her thighs.

Lars-Göran Hannler exchanged a few words with someone further down the corridor. ‘That’ll be great,’ he said, before pushing the door closed and sinking down on the chair behind the desk. Susso looked at the computer. The screensaver consisted of the emblem of the Swedish police force, which was slowly rebounding from one side of the screen to another. It looked desperately unimaginative.

‘As I mentioned on the phone,’ Lars-Göran said, rolling the chair back a few centimetres, ‘we want to know how you went about taking the photo in Edit Mickelsson’s garden.’

‘And as I mentioned on the phone,’ she said, repeating his own words, ‘it was a wildlife camera. I didn’t take the picture.’ She mimed taking a photograph.

The police officer regarded her for a long time. He had folded his plump arms across his chest.

‘So all you did was set up the camera on Edit Mickelsson’s house?’

Susso nodded.

‘And you have no idea who that is in the picture?’

She shook her head.

‘Obviously, if I knew I would have told you.’

The officer nodded.

‘Did you ever meet Mattias?’

‘No. Or rather, yes. He stood watching me once while I was
asleep. In Edit’s house. But, no, I have never met him or spoken to him or anything.’

The police officer inhaled through his nostrils and cleared his throat. He placed one elbow on the back of his chair and locked his fingers together over a stomach that stretched his shirt and revealed skin in the gaps between the buttons.

‘Because there is no room here for any kind of hoax, as I’m sure you understand.’

‘Hoax?’

‘Some internet scam …’

‘It isn’t,’ she said, leaning towards him. ‘It’s nothing like that. It’s genuine. On the level, or however you want to say it.’

All at once she felt exhausted. What did he actually want to know? She stared at the grey mottled vinyl flooring and tried to collect her thoughts.

‘It’s like it’s unreal but … I don’t know what to say.’

There was a long pause before the policeman spoke again. It was as if he wanted to let her sit there, squirming. Let the silence take effect. With any luck it might result in her revealing something new and useful.

‘I’ve looked up your website, you know. Read what’s on it.’

‘It’s only  … a project. That’s all,’ she said feebly.

‘And we are familiar with your maternal grandfather, Gunnar Myrén. But I have never seen this bear before. Or the troll, or whatever it might be. That’s new to me.’

‘We …’ she began, but was interrupted when the door opened behind her. Instinctively she turned her head, but by that time the door had closed. She looked quizzically at the officer. His gaze was clear and unchanged.

‘He was afraid,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Afraid of not being believed.
Because people didn’t believe him. And then there’s Mum. She’s afraid of making herself look stupid.’

She smiled as she said this, but the police officer did not return her smile.

‘And you’re not?’ he said.

Susso shrugged her shoulders.

‘I don’t care. Not as much.’

He nodded his head.

‘And this is the first time you have captured something on a photograph?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, nodding emphatically. ‘I have photos other people have taken, but they’re not very good. If you have visited the website, you will have seen them already.’

He received this information with a nod, but she could not decide whether he nodded because he had seen the pictures, or whether he simply wanted to move on.

‘But it’s the first time I’ve … captured anything on a photo myself. I’ve set up the camera before but never got anything. So this is the first time.’

He watched her for a few seconds, waiting in case she had anything more to add. There was nothing. When she shut her lips and raised her eyebrows to indicate that she had finished he stood up.

‘Wait a minute,’ he muttered, and walked out of the room.

*

He returned with two other men trailing behind him. Both were in their sixties. One was short and bald, with a flattened nose, and she thought he looked like an old boxer. He was wearing a light-blue police shirt with a dark-blue tie, and a ballpoint pen was attached to the edge of his breast pocket. His name was Kjell-Åke Andersson and he told Susso that he was leading the investigation.
He spoke slowly, emphasising every syllable, and she could tell he came from Tornedalen. He pulled up a chair and sat down diagonally opposite her. His eyes were red and bloodshot, but he kept them fixed on her.

A trail of aftershave followed the second man into the room. He had a leather jacket and a white, well-trimmed moustache. Before he took his place by the window, scanning the car park and the street, he introduced himself briefly as Wikström from the county CID. The black jacket shone like the protective shell on a beetle’s back, and Susso thought there was something odd about him. The jacket and the overpowering smell of aftershave did not correspond to his age.

She now had three pairs of eyes directed at her, and she did not like it. Only intermittently did she succeed in looking unconcerned. She worked her tin of snus out of her pocket but she could not bring herself to open it, and sat pressing the lid, making it creak. She was fully aware that she gave the impression of being nervous but there was nothing she could do about it.

‘It is extremely rare for a child to be abducted in this way,’ said Kjell-Åke ponderously. ‘That’s why it’s hard for us to know how to go about looking for him. But we do know that every hour is vitally important now, at the beginning.’

When he had said this he fell silent, and judging from his enquiring look it was clear that Susso had to confirm that she understood. She nodded.

‘For that reason,’ he continued, ‘it can be disastrous if the investigation is focused in the wrong direction. Even at this stage, after a few days.’

With small nods of her head Susso indicated that she understood this too.

‘So before we go any further we want to be sure that this picture, the one you took with your camera, is not a hoax, or whatever you want to call it. That it’s not someone dressed up, that it doesn’t have anything to do with this website of yours in any way.’

She kept quiet, waiting for the rest, which was about to come.

‘That is the most likely explanation we have,’ he said, inhaling deeply, ‘considering the person’s actual appearance.’

He breathed out and gave her a meaningful look. His eyebrows were like cotton wool on a forehead crowded with lines.

‘It’s not a wind-up,’ Susso said. ‘Not as far as I know, anyway.’

‘You know,’ said the man by the window, craning his neck as if he had caught sight of something that interested him outside, ‘we could draw a line under all this today. But if at a later stage of our investigation it emerges that you have lied, or withheld information, you could be prosecuted. For impeding police investigations. It’s a crime that can result in a prison sentence. You need to be aware of that.’

‘Furthermore,’ interjected Kjell-Åke, crossing his arms and wrinkling his tie, ‘it could have significant consequences for the boy. Today he might be alive, but in a couple of days he might not be.’

When Susso looked up she saw the detective in charge of investigations had tilted his head to one side.

‘Now you wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you?’ he said kindly. ‘So it’s best you tell us straight away whether it’s an internet hoax or something.’

‘I can only tell you what I’ve done,’ Susso said, ‘and all I did was set up a camera at Edit’s house.’

Wikström had picked up his mobile, and an unhappy look
spread over Kjell-Åke’s face. It was as if he pitied her for not fully understanding the implication of what he had said.

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘I don’t know what else I can say,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it was a stupid thing to do. But all I did was set up the camera. I don’t know any more about the man in the photo than you do. Believe me, on my life.’